IG #6: The Biggest Challenge in Food

Plus, the Science of Beauty and Truth & How History Influences Our Thinking

Hi everyone.

Hope you had a great week. Below are three articles I wrote this week on subjects with enduring implications.

• The Biggest Challenge in Food: Naturally Re-thinking Manufacturing: The media and the trade writes about the public’s loss of trust in large brands. While this is truly happening, its roots lie deeper in the industry and along the supply chain.

• The Science of Beauty & Truth: Will Robots Like Jerry Seinfeld? I recently read an incredible paper by Dr. Jurgen Schmidhuber on the idea of compression in learning, both for humans and machines. It puts a fine point on what it is we love about the things we find beautiful and insightful. I am coming to believe that our creativity is most supreme when we are able to simplify complex truths into something concise and insightful. In fact, our very bodies reward us for this work.

• Notes & Quotes: The Relativity of Historical Thought: I recently started Arnold Toynbee’s 12 volume series called A Study of History, wherein Dr. Toynbee discusses the tendency of historians to form views of historical events based on their own cultural views and identities, rather than the significance of actual events. The result is some pretty startling outcomes in our understanding of the past.

Stay in the Game

This article might be the most moving thing I have read in a long time. Speaking of compression, Drew Dickson compresses so many things about the human condition: brokenness, redemption, endurance, hope, perseverance, love, and parenting all into one phrase.

Thanks to Patrick O’Shaughnessy and his book club for this article.

Capital Flowchart

I am often asked to give advice to emerging companies in the food space about raising capital and selling. My bio tells you why. I am thinking about creating a series of 5 minute posts detailing the world of possibilities. In the meantime, I have created this flow chart designed to help business owners in the consumer space understand their options. Let me know what you think (click the image to see an enlarged version).

Parenting

Any parent can make a prodigy. When you do, what you are doing is accessing nature’s own backup in-case-of-emergency “grow up fast” plan. Every orphaned street urchin is a prodigy and is running this program. Don’t do it.

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 23, 2019

Slower is Better than Fester

Intimidation-based sales is, unfortunately, incredibly effective.
It’s also a festering snowball, as if you start from a “this is harder than you can understand and need us” approach, where can you go? Certainly not towards greater transparency and mutual respect.

— Emily Holdman (@emilyleldridge) August 20, 2019

Have a great week.

(Shameless ask: if you like my work, and want to look smart, please forward along, or better yet, post to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn).